


Boundaries

by Anonymous



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2021-01-13 15:14:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21153461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Tony’s never been great about the whole gift-giving thing.He knows this about himself. He’s accepted it. And because he is who he is, he’s engineered a solution.





	Boundaries

* * *

“_Hi, I'm Captain America, and I know that keeping up with schoolwork can be tough. Sometimes taking shortcuts can be tempting, like when a friend offers to give you the answers on a test, or lets you copy their homework.”_

“_But as a guy who took a really big shortcut into the future, believe me when I say that when you try to cheat to get ahead, the only person you’re really cheating, is yourself._”

*

The thing is, Tony’s never been great about the whole gift-giving thing. 

He knows this about himself. He’s accepted it. And because he is who he is, he’s engineered a solution.

Tony may not be adept enough at the whole interpersonal relationship thing to consistently remember birthdays and anniversaries, food allergies and off-hand comments people make, pet peeves and minor grievances... but FRIDAY is. 

Or rather, she can be.

She listens to all the things that Tony tends to filter out, too distracted by practical nanotech applications to absorb that Pepper just made a comment about how much she misses early morning swims in the heated saltwater pool at the now long-destroyed Malibu house. 

But FRIDAY remembers. 

So the next time Pepper’s birthday rolls around, Tony gives her a little summer getaway house on the South Carolina coast. It’s not Malibu, but it’s just as gorgeous; not to mention far closer to SI’s home base in New York, where Pepper spends most of her time these days. It comes with a heated saltwater lap pool that overlooks the bay.

Pepper knows him well enough to know it was FRIDAY’s doing, but she also knows him well enough to appreciate the thought that went into teaching FRIDAY to think that way. (At least, he’s pretty sure she appreciates the causality there. He hopes so.)

And like the saying goes, it’s the thought that counts, right?

Right.

He sets some ground rules - general guidelines and extremely generous spending limits, just so FRIDAY doesn’t accidentally buy someone a small island country., at least not without running it by Tony for approval first.

There are a bunch of people on the list. Pepper and Rhodey, obviously. Steve and Natasha and Clint. Fury. Wanda. Vision too, although he tends not to really want much in the way of material gifts, but he does seem to appreciate small knick knacks. Or at least that’s what FRIDAY tells Tony, based on the data she’s collected.

Peter is on there too - although as a seventeen year old kid with superpowers, mostly what he seems to want is unlimited food and equally unlimited mobile data, both of which Tony is more than happy to provide.

It may not be a technical miracle on the level of clean energy or adding a new element to the periodic table, but Tony is pretty damn proud of himself nonetheless.

*

Another thing Peter wants-slash-needs is a new backpack, about once a month on average. 

It’s better than it used to be, when he was averaging one every other week, but it’s still somewhat baffling. The kid has both an IQ that’s through the roof and _literal_ super senses to help him out. Surely he should be able to figure out a way not to lose his stuff on a regular basis. But apparently not.

Not that it really matters. Repeatedly replacing the kid’s backpack - even with all of the necessary ancillary items like graphing calculators and school textbooks - barely makes a dent in the funds Tony’s set aside to support Peter’s superheroing endeavors. 

Plus, Tony kind of appreciates the way Peter will blush when he comes into the lab the next day, muttering his thanks as he sets his new bag down by the door.

But other than that, he doesn’t really pay attention to what the kid gets. He knows most of it is little stuff - like a new pair of shoes, or a bespoke suit for the first school dance Peter actually gets to attend in full (as opposed to spending it clinging to the side of a hijacked Quinjet in his pajamas, which is still a thought that sets Tony’s teeth on edge.)

So, other than actually noticing when Peter shows up carrying a new backpack or wearing a new pair of shoes or a new jacket when winter really sets in, Tony doesn’t really pay much attention. 

He doesn’t think about it, because he doesn’t need to. There are limitations in place. FRIDAY isn’t going to give Peter a gun or a bazooka (as if Peter would ever ask for anything like that, but still.) She isn’t going to help him get a fake ID, or a doctor’s note so he can cut class to spend more time out patrolling. She isn’t even going to buy him a car or a motorcycle - not without prompting Tony to clear it with May first.

Tony mentally pats himself on the back. He’s thought of everything.

*

As it turns out, he has not, in fact, thought of _everything_.

*

“_Technology can be a powerful tool to enrich our lives, foster communication across geographical and cultural borders, help us both learn from and better understand one another,” Captain America pauses to gesture to a display of a United Nations flag, before resuming his standard hands-on-hips pose._

“_But it can also be dangerous. Scientists figuring out how to split the atom led to advances in everything from clean energy to medical science, but it also led to the invention of one of the most destructive weapons known to mankind.” The video cuts away to newsreel footage of a blooming mushroom cloud. “So next time you’re on the phone or laptop computer, remember that you and you alone get to decide how you use that technology.”_

“_Use it responsibly.”_

*

If Peter blushes a little more than normal when he stops by the lab one week, Tony doesn’t especially notice. Or if he does, he doesn’t take it as a sign that anything is wrong. 

To anyone else, this might have registered as the first sign of trouble - but Tony has succeeded in outsourcing thoughtfulness to his AI, and as a result he pays even less attention than he normally would to all the squishy interpersonal stuff. Still though, while FRIDAY can handle the mundane boring gift-type stuff, the superhero stuff is still wholly Tony’s domain. And speaking of which -

“Hey kid, you try out the stuff I left for you?”

Tony nods in the general direction of what he’s come to think of as Peter’s lab bench, where he’d left a sample of a new web formula for the kid to try out a few days ago. 

Peter blanches, which Tony will only notice much later on reviewing the security cam footage of this conversation. In the moment, he only notices that Peter’s voice goes high and a little bit thready in a way that usually implies the kid is about to do something he knows will get him in trouble.

“Y-yep.”

“And? How’d it work out?”

“Uhh.”

“I know you’re a science nerd kid, but c’mon, you nailed the language and essay portions of your SATs. Use your words, Parker.”

“It was great? I mean, thank you. You didn’t um, have to do that.”

“Specially formulated to last longer, and it’s a little denser than your current standard-issue stuff, so just a little should go a longer way. You’ll run out a little less often.”

Peter makes a strangled noise. “Uh huh,” he says. “Yeah, it uh, it smells nice too.”

Peter has never specifically mentioned the web fluid smelling bad, at least as far as Tony is aware, but he’ll check with FRIDAY later. He figures it’s probably a super-senses thing.

“O-okay, not exactly my primary concern, but sure. I guess that’s a plus,” Tony replies. It’s weird feedback, but hey, it’s feedback. 

To his credit, Tony does actually notice by this point that something about the conversation is a little… off. 

“You feeling okay? You’re acting a little weird,” he asks.

“Yep. Great. I feel great. I’m gonna go look at that weird alien plant thing Dr. Banner sent over, if that’s okay?”

“Sure, go nuts,” Tony says, waving a hand in dismissal.

Peter hurries off, probably just excited to go indulge his inner botanist. 

Tony is a little miffed not to have more explicit feedback on how the webbing was working out, but the slight is quickly forgotten when he discovers a bug in the new nanite coding he’s been working on.

Peter, for his part, seems to be obsessively focused on the alien plant thing. Which, yeah okay cool, space plant. Tony gets it. But still. He’d expected a little more enthusiasm on Peter’s part.

*

“_I take national security pretty seriously, but there’s another kind of security we should all keep in mind every day: personal security.”_

“_Hackers and scammers may try to steal your data, access your banking information, even pretend to be you in order to scam your friends and family. Make sure you’re keeping your passwords secure, updating them frequently, and never sharing them with others.”_

*

Peter keeps blushing and stammering whenever they talk, which Tony notices to be sure, but he doesn’t really _notice _notice. 

Sure, Peter’s fanboy jitters had settled to more of a low-level background noise sort of thing in the past year, but it'd always been there. Tony’s not sure why it’s making such a resurgence now, exactly, but he’d be lying if he said his ego wasn’t loving it. 

So the kid’s still a fan; it’s adorable. 

What really catches his attention though is the way Peter starts fumbling tools in the lab. The kid has always been excitable and awkward - but he’s never been particularly clumsy. Tony is busy walking him through some fairly straightforward circuit board repairs on his little spider drone when Peter drops the soldering iron for the second time.

Tony winces. 

“I thought you were supposed to have the opposite of butterfingers, kid.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Peter mutters, picking up the gun and setting it back in the stand.

“You doing alright there? You need a snack or a nap or something?”

Peter frowns at him for a moment, probably trying to decide whether the nap thing was a dig at his age or not. It wasn’t, actually. When Tony starts getting clumsy in the lab it’s generally down to either lack of food or lack of sleep. If Peter’s issue isn’t one of those two things, then Tony is pretty much out of suggestions.

“No. I’m fine,” Peter says.

“If you say so. You almost had it, anyway.”

Peter picks up the component he’s trying to reattach, setting it carefully in place with the tweezers. He rubs his other palm down his thigh. Sweaty palms, maybe. Maybe it’s a weird spider-biology thing that Tony should be looking into, but overall the kid seems to be alright. He doesn’t feel feverish, at least as far as Tony can tell from where his hand is resting on the back of Peter’s neck.

“Just take it nice and slow. No rush,” Tony tells the kid. Peter seems to be laser focused on the component. Good. “You want to use a light touch here. Just enough heat to bring everything together, but not too much or you’ll damage the board. Slow and steady, that’s it. Perfect.”

Peter makes an oddly frustrated-sounding noise at that, but his hands stay steady. A minute later and the component is cleanly and securely reattached and Peter is setting the soldering iron back in its stand with obvious relief.

Tony claps the kid on the back and then wanders back over to his own project.

He doesn’t notice that Peter spends the next several minutes with his hands spread out flat on the smooth metal of the lab table, breathing carefully controlled.

*

Tony’s never been great with boundaries. This is also something he knows about himself, although knowing in a general sense doesn’t really help him much in situationally-specific ways. 

Tony created FRIDAY.

So it’s sort of a blind-leading-the-blind situation.

FRIDAY flags little tidbits of conversations that she happens to witness, sure. Along with anything else she thinks might be useful intel for optimizing her gift-giving subroutines.

Like say, passwords. And Amazon wish lists. 

Internet search history in general is a gold mine; which product pages someone spends a long time on, what items does a person add to their cart, only to click off the page before ordering? Have they scrolled through the reviews for it on Amazon, trying to judge if it’s worth the price tag?

To be clear, Tony doesn’t explicitly tell FRIDAY to dig that deep. All he wanted was for her to pay attention to the little things so he could express his appreciation for the people in his life in a way that they might actually enjoy.

And for most of the people in his life she doesn’t. Pepper and Happy and everyone else on the team have no problem telling FRIDAY to back off if she’s getting a little too Big Brother with the snooping around.

While Peter... doesn’t. 

FRIDAY is smart, and these new metrics she uses for Peter prove to be far more effective tools in achieving her standing directives than listening for offhand comments in casual conversations, hoping for breadcrumbs to guide her.

Tony doesn’t tell her to _spy_ \- not exactly. 

She learns how all on her own. 

*

Peter’s wearing a new pair of jeans that look great on him. Not that Tony is looking, just, he’s glad to see that FRIDAY’s tailoring protocols remain up to snuff.

Peter flashes him a quick grin when he spots Tony across the lab.

“Hey Mr. Stark. Thanks for the um, the gifts, by the way.”

“Everything fit okay?”

Peter makes a strangled noise. “Ye-ep. Yeah. Fits great.”

“Good.”

They work for a while in comfortable silence. Well, mostly comfortable. Peter keeps shifting around on his lab stool like he can’t sit still.

“Okay, what gives? Did somebody feed you sugar after midnight?”

Peter stills. “No?”

“Seriously. If you need to go swing around, burn off a little energy, I promise not to take it personally.”

Peter bites his lip, seeming to consider it. He nods.

“Yeah, I think I’ll go... do that. That’s good. That’s a good idea.”

Peter slides off his stool, but rather than bolting out of the lab like Tony would expect given how tightly wound he looks, Peter walks out of the lab at a moderate pace, moving almost stiffly. Tony’s first thought is that the kid is sore from a bad fight, except he already has alerts in place for that sort of thing - nothing has pinged in at least the last week or so.

He checks with FRIDAY just to be sure, but FRIDAY assures him Karen has no record of a serious confrontation, and there’s no news reports or security cam footage she can find either. So, probably not hurt.

He’s probably just being paranoid.

*

“_Whether you’re on the battlefield, or spending some alone time with your date, it never hurts to be prepared,” Captain Rogers says directly to the camera. _

“_I take my protection everywhere I go,” he says, holding up his shield, “and so should you,” he finishes, holding up a wrapped condom in his other hand._

*

Peter’s birthday is coming up. Tony actually knows this with FRIDAY’s help, for reasons he has chosen not to examine all too closely. 

But the point is, Peter’s birthday is coming up, and Tony needs ideas. It has to be something big, because Peter deserves big things. The biggest and best things. Tony isn’t sure exactly what kind of things just yet, but he’s figuring it out.

“Hey FRI, pull up Peter’s fairy godmother list. I wanna see what he’s got, what’s still on the list. I need ideas.”

“Sure thing, boss.”

Tony’s screen is wiped clear and immediately repopulated with several lists - things Tony has already given him, and things FRIDAY thinks he may want, all of it meticulously ranked and categorized. 

A lot of it is just boring stuff. The exact kind of boring that had prompted Tony to create FRIDAY’s gift-giving subroutine in the first place. Clothes, sneakers, a couple dozen backpacks (seriously, Pete, what the hell), a new phone with an extra durable, shatterproof, waterproof case. Movie tickets, a special edition Lego set. Boring, boring, and worse - far too easy, boring - 

Huh.

There are any number of perfectly boring reasons Peter might need lube. Maybe his web shooters were sticking and the hydrocarbons in WD-40 interacted with the webbing formula in unpredictable ways. Tony could look into alternatives for - 

He’s thinking too much about this. 

Peter probably needs lube for the exact same reason anyone else on the planet needs lube, and that’s definitely none of Tony’s business.

There is, of course, still the slightly dubious fact that Tony has been the one supplying Peter with said lube (apparently).

It doesn’t mean anything. If Tony gave the kid cash and he went out and bought the lube himself it’d effectively be the same thing, right? Right.

He tries to tell himself the same thing a few minutes later when he discovers the toy. Toys. Plural.

Toys that he has apparently bought for Peter, as gifts. Correction: toys that FRIDAY has bought for Peter, on Tony’s behalf.

“FRIDAY, _what the fuck?_”

“Peter seems to especially enjoy the titanium gold one.”

“How - ” no, he’s not going to ask. He’s not. “How do you know that?” Whoops.

“Karen told me.”

“Jesus Christ.” Tony buries his face in his hands. “Why the hell are you talking to Karen about Peter’s sex toys?” 

Or a better question, Tony thinks, would be why is _he_ talking to FRIDAY right now about Peter’s sex toys?

The world may never know.

“You told me to optimize my algorithms to prioritize positive responses. I was soliciting response feedback from a reliable source.”

Of course she was. He programed FRIDAY to be an overachiever. To not just learn, but to be constantly adjusting, seeking to further improve her own algorithms to achieve her goals. Her goal in this case had been to make Peter happy - a perfectly reasonable goal.

It’s not like it’s FRIDAY’s fault that apparently what makes Peter happy is a sleek titanium gold vibrating plug.

The responsible thing to do would be to immediately reconfigure FRIDAY’s parameters so she stops sending Peter anything above a PG-13 rating.

But.

Peter would be bound to notice the change and wonder why. And it’s not that Tony doesn’t want Peter to have any of these things, if he wants them - it’s just that Tony probably shouldn’t be the one providing them.

It’s a good thing no one’s ever accused Tony of being especially responsible.

He does start paying much closer attention to Peter's list though.

*

Peter practically bounces into the lab the following week with a huge grin on his face. Tony cocks an eyebrow at him in question.

“School is over,” Peter says with a shrug, “_and_ Ned and I both got accepted to that new NASA summer program, and it’s not even going to cost a lot because I guess they have scholarships, so May isn’t stressing out about it.”

(They don’t have scholarships, actually. Or rather, they hadn’t, until FRIDAY tipped Tony off about the program. Not that he’s going to mention any of that to Peter.)

“Let me get this straight, you’re excited that school is over so that you can go do another, more intense kind of school.”

“Oh. Yeah, I guess, but it’s not just like, sitting in class all day. We get to go see a bunch of stuff from Project Mercury and the Apollo expeditions, and then there’s this engineering competition and the winning team gets to go on one of those zero-gravity simulator flights.”

“You’ve been to space,” Tony feels the need to point out.

“Well yeah, but Ned hasn’t. And plus we had artificial gravity that whole time.”

“Next time we’re in space and not in any imminent mortal danger, I promise to flip off the artificial gravity so you can have your very own Bill Paxton montage.”

Tony wasn’t actually aware it was possible for Peter’s expression to light up even more, but somehow it does.

“Really?”

“Absolutely.”

See, Tony thinks, there’s an idea for a perfectly reasonable gift right there that doesn’t involve poking around in Peter’s pornhub search history. Not that Tony's been doing that. (FRIDAY has.)

And since he’s not doing that, he can remain blissfully unaware that Peter goes home and googles assorted variations of “sex in zero gravity” on his phone.

Goddammit.

*

A week after Peter leaves for DC, it belatedly dawns on Tony why he was ragging on the nerd camp even as he paid Peter’s way. He wants Peter to be happy, of course he does, and he wants Peter to have all the things he might want or need, most especially the things that continue to challenge and inspire him. 

But what it means right now is that Peter is three hundred miles away for the next nine days, and even though Peter is usually only in the lab for a few hours a week, the complete lack of his presence makes the whole place feel empty.

Tony could fly down there, of course. And he does consider it.

The rest of the space nerds at the camp would probably love it, he’d be doing his part to inspire the next generation and all that jazz, which is great PR… he shouldn’t though. It’s only two weeks. Tony spends the time doing something else he definitely shouldn’t be doing either; looking through the wish list FRIDAY has compiled on the kid. 

It’s enlightening, to say the least. Peter may look and act like a boy scout, but he isn’t one. And given the amount of time he spends between school and patrolling, Tony is frankly impressed at the sheer volume and variety of porn the kid finds time to watch on a weekly basis.

He has some obvious preferences. Older, fit men with facial hair, which is both intriguing and ego-boosting; although his penchant for slightly graying hair sends Tony into a momentary midlife crisis spiral in front of the bathroom mirror. He gets over it.

But also - bondage, which comes as a surprise but maybe it shouldn’t, given Peter’s propensity for webs.

Tony wonders if the kid has found anything that can actually hold him for more than a minute without being completely demolished - judging by his search history, probably not. His webbing is strong, but anything he might try to attach it to wouldn’t stand a chance. 

Tony has plenty of ideas for that, not that any of them are things he can reasonably give the kid for his birthday. Barring any of those ideas, Tony decides to do the mundane thing: he texts Peter and asks him what he wants.

Peter, little shit that he is, replies back: _idk, surprise me. ;)_

Tony almost drops the phone. Not that the text is salacious on its own, but because Peter is sending him that thinking that Tony has been _intentionally_ buying him sex toys for the past few months.

He spends a frustrating two days trying to decide what Peter would consider a worthy surprise but also won’t immediately send May into a murderous rage.

A new suit, he eventually decides. Peter is due for one, surely, and May couldn’t possibly object - not if it’s something meant to help keep Peter safe. Right?

Right.

*

Gift giving may be hard, but superhero suits are easy. Or, okay not _easy_, it’s not like any drooling idiot could do it. But Tony can come up with half a dozen ideas for new features for Peter’s suits on a slow day; granted, some of those ideas will be absolute garbage, but at least one or two will be workable into something not half bad.

Tony does actually have a decent idea of the parts of Peter’s suit that could be improved. He’s seen the kid fight first hand, he’s watched enough videos and listened to enough after-action reports from FRIDAY to know what features should top the list, even without FRIDAY’s secret little cheat sheet.

He can figure out a way to up the tear-resistance, definitely. Peter’s grown a little bit too. He hasn’t gained much height, but he definitely seems to need a little more give in the shoulders and thighs recently.

Tony pours hours into the new suit; practically every waking moment where is he isn’t obligated to be handling actual adult responsibilities. It’s fun. The problem, of course, is the same as it’s always been - Tony doesn’t quite know when to stop.

“Honest opinion, FRI. Where are we?”

“Peter will be very happy,” she assures him.

Tony rolls his eyes. Peter would be _very happy_ with a gift card to Tower Records, if - well, if Tower Records still existed. That’s not the point, though. Peter might be happy with a gift card, but he deserves to get something several orders of magnitude better than that.

Peter won’t be back for another two days, and his birthday is a week later.

Tony raps his knuckles against the lab table. “It needs something,” he says.

FRIDAY knows better than to ask ‘what.’

*

“_Hi, I'm Captain America, here to talk to you about one of the most valuable traits a soldier or student can have."_

_"Patience.”_

*

“Holy crap, Mr. Stark! I can’t - hold on, is that - ”

It takes the kid a while to get to an actual, comprehensible question - something about the self-repairing polymers that Peter’s already have a full-on geek meltdown over before he’s even put the suit on.

“So, you like it?”

Peter looks at him like he’s unbelievable.

Tony’s been on the receiving end of that look plenty of times. It’s not always a good thing.

“It’s _awesome_,” Peter says, a little breathlessly. “Can I - ?”

“No, it’s actually meant for display only.”

Peter shoots him a commendable attempt at a dirty look and Tony can’t help flashing a grin in reply. He waves a hand in invitation, and Peter reaches up to tap the logo on the chest, releasing the new suit from the display-form stand. 

Within minutes Peter is flicking through his updated web shooter interface with ease, his new mini drone zipping around scanning basically everything in sight, because why not. 

The suit looks good on him. Actually, the suit looks _great_ on him, not that Tony has spent a lot of time over the past couple of weeks thinking about it.

“Thank you, Mr. Stark. Seriously, this is amazing.”

“Happy birthday, kid.”

“Um, speaking of birthdays though - was there anything else that you, you know, wanted to give me? In person this time, maybe?”

It’s a pretty ballsy question really, but then, Peter’s always been pretty ballsy.

“What, the multi-million dollar suit wasn’t enough?”

“It was - I mean it is! It’s great, really. I just thought there might be something else. Something not superhero related, something more uh, personal.”

“Hmm.”

Tony can see Peter’s shoulders start to creep upwards, as if he’s convincing himself moment by moment that he may have actually pushed his luck one step too far. Tony should probably feel bad about making the kid squirm like this, but it’s a little bit too much fun to watch to put a stop to it right away.

“How many of the new features have you found so far?” Tony asks.

“A lot.”

“You think you found all of them?”

Peter clearly knows him well enough to hesitate. “No?”

“No.”

Tony could give a voice command, the suit is programmed for that, but it would ruin the surprise. Instead, he types out a quick preset command on his terminal and then waits until he hears Peter gasp.

“Personal enough for you?”

“_Ohmygod_.”

“Happy birthday, Pete.”

Maybe Tony’s not so bad at gift-giving after all, at least if Peter’s reaction is anything to go by.


End file.
